The Hangman's Requiem
by Dame Hetchel
Summary: A hanged man, a gypsy, a tale passed down through the years...it had changed considerably by the time it reached your ears. A new riff on the legend of the Haunted Mansion.
1. The Prelude

Greetings, cygnets. This little ditty is actually a medley of two HM mythos: the old-skool CM biographies and the Gracey family backstory written for the movie and utterly wasted…er, under-utilized. Served up with a spring of mint and a shot of the Dame's own Melodrama Bourbon, so expect the unexpected.

The HM is Disney property; I am but a temporary tenant.

* * *

**THE HANGMAN'S REQUIEM**  
(a variation on a theme) 

by Dame Hetchel

* * *

Somewhere, between the heyday of Gracey Manor as the preferred gathering place for New Orleans' effete elite and its current status as run-down dwelling—as in, "I dare you to run down and touch the old Gracey place"—there was a miscommunication. This happens quite frequently in the making of legends; after all, who really believes that some blind guy in a toga single-handedly spun the tale of Odysseus? Legends require embellishments, personal touches added by each orator who passes it along to new ears, trying to keep it interesting, and ultimately keep it alive. 

Accordingly, the tale of what transpired on that fateful night in Gracey Manor has as many different twists as it has had tellers. Sometimes the bride dies at the hands of the jealous gypsy, who likewise leaves Master Gracey hanging from the rafters; sometimes he hangs himself in a frenzied fit of anguish. Sometimes the butler does it; sometimes it's the mousy maid Prudence, a far more interesting character in death than she ever was in life. Sometimes they don't even get the names right, as Master Gracey gets called everything from George to Ezra to Edward to Yale. (For the record, his name was Edward. His father, the previous Master Gracey, was George; his driver was Ezra; and while he _was_ accepted to Yale, he opted for Harvard instead.)

And while every variation on the theme is a rousing concerto in its own right, it's a shame that the original composition has been forgotten; for it is an interesting tale too. As always, there are the usual suspects: the gypsy, the hanged man, the butler in the conservatory with the candlestick—but there isn't one lovelorn bride-to-be, there's two. "Ah!" you say, "I've heard this version before!"—but as should always be the case when dealing with matters of the unseen, never trust the first glance.

Before this unfinished symphony will fill itself in, we must go back to the beginning—well, not quite the _beginning_, but a good deal of time before Gracey Manor was reduced to a mere blurb near the back of a Gray Line Tour pamphlet. Have patience, friends; all will reveal itself in due course, and after all, the dead are seldom in any hurry.


	2. A Midsummer's Melancholy

Introduction courtesy of Mr. Poe; God rest his rum-soaked soul.

_

* * *

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of—_

"Edward. Pssst."

The inquisitive freckled face of a thirteen-year-old boy appeared quite suddenly around the door jamb of the comfortably cluttered old study. Normally the effect of a disembodied head materializing out of thin air might give one a bad start, but the young lad within the room, one Edward Gracey, was too engrossed in the thick tome balanced across his knees to notice.

"What, Asa?" he replied automatically as he flicked another page.

Asa uttered a deep snort of disapproval as he sauntered into the room and flopped down beside his friend on the dusty red chaise. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have dared so much as lay a toe upon the fabulous parquet flooring in the elder Gracey's private study, for fear of catching it from the austere Master—or worse, his infinitely scarier shadow, Ramsley the butler. After all, the children of servants had no business traipsing about the Manor with impunity, something he was reminded of on a near-daily basis. Often whilst having something flat and wooden applied forcefully to the seat of his pants.

But Edward could have cared less about all that, and seeing as how his father seldom let him out of the house, and how Asa and the other servants' children were more or less his only friends—Asa personally felt he deserved a little leeway when it came to the rules.

"Studying _again_, Edward? I thought your lessons were over by now. I could've sworn I saw the creaky old geezer head downstairs." That was another thing. The butler would've tanned his hide for having the gall to address Edward by his first name, when it was Young Master Gracey, if you please. He'd called him that maybe twice before Edward had begged him to stop—out of Ramsley's earshot, of course.

"He did. And it's not an assignment. It's Poe." Edward's deep brown eyes flickered broodingly across the page, as he tugged self-consciously at his green silk cravat with the hand not gripping the book. Asa looked down at his own simple, coarse shirt and plain trousers, ripped at the knee from tree-climbing, and thought with a grin that Ramsley would sooner drop dead before allowing the Young Master to dress like _that._ Edward was always dressed for the most proper of occasions, although his morning lessons were about the most proper event of his day. So utterly pointless. It wasn't as if anyone was going to _see _him, as he never went anywhere.

Though Asa was determined to change that, at least for today.

"Who's that?" he asked, feigning interest in the interest of getting Edward off the chaise. Asa, being only partially literate and possessed of a short attention span, had little respect for the printed word. As far as he was concerned, Edward spent entirely too much time reading and not nearly enough getting into trouble.

"Edgar Allan Poe. _The Fall of the House of Usher._" Edward nodded toward the book, a thick fringe of dark hair falling across his forehead with the gesture. "It's fascinating…" His normally soft voice trailed off to a whisper as his attention refocused itself on the page.

"But not so fascinating you couldn't put it down for a couple of hours, right?"

Edward pushed his hair back out of his eyes and peered curiously at Asa. _Success!_ "What do you mean?" he asked, suddenly suspicious. "Look, the last time I let you 'investigate' the mausoleum you almost—"

"No, this is better." Asa brushed off the mausoleum incident with a casual flick of his wrist. "There's a traveling circus at the edge of town—Phin and I watched them set up this morning—and—"

"And you think it'd be fun to go poke the tigers with sticks."

"No, but thanks for the idea. No, it's Ezra's day off, and he said he'd take us up there. All of us. Of course, that means Prudence is going to be there, seeing as she's his daughter and all, but I figure we can lose her in the—"

"You know I can't go, Asa," Edward said quietly as he looked back down at his book, regret weighing down his voice like a pile of bricks. "My father and Ramsley would never allow it."

"Which is why you don't _tell_ them you're going!" Clearly, Asa thought, his bad influence on Edward was not working as quickly as it should.

"You know it's not that simple." Edward, having finally extracted himself from the dreadful fate of Usher, marked his place in the book with a ribbon and sighed with a world-weariness that no fourteen-year-old boy should possess. "Even if I did manage to slip past Ramsley, he'd realize I was gone soon enough, and then I'd be in all sorts of trouble once I—"

"Look at it this way, Edward," Asa broke in, eagerly taking in the conflict in Edward's eyes. It was almost as if he could see the proverbial cherub and devil perched on his friend's shoulders, whispering frantically into each ear. "The worst Ramsley can do to you is turn you in to your father. The worst your father can do is send you away to some boarding school in Boston—"

"Milton," supplanted Edward, his eyes downcast as he slumped further into the couch. Asa grinned. One more nudge of the pitchfork…

"—and seeing as how your train fare's already paid for, you've got nothing left to lose." Asa leaned forward, hands on his patched knees. "Come on, Edward. Would it kill you to forget about being Proper Young Master Gracey for one afternoon?"

Edward's gaze glazed over as it fixed on one of the marble busts placed in conspicuous niches around the room. Asa hated those scowling stone heads, whose blank eyes always seemed to be following you around the room, and which he tried to avoid looking at at all costs. It was a harder feat in the study, where you couldn't turn around without knocking one over. The Master must have gotten a twelve-for-one deal when he picked them up in Britain.

They held no horror for Edward, having grown up around the things; but knowing what he did of the young master's early childhood, Asa often wondered if anything could anymore. Not that he would ever dare to broach the subject. Goading Edward into breaking the rules and addressing him like a fellow commoner was one thing. Entirely acceptable behavior. But bringing up the matter of his mother and siblings and that crazy business with the gypsy—that was taboo, plain and simple.

Suddenly, Edward's eyes snapped back into focus and he stood up so fast that Asa nearly fell off the chaise. "You're right," he said firmly, newfound conviction in his voice. "Let's go."

Asa grinned again and scrambled after his friend. Maybe the creepy heads were good for something after all.


	3. Amid Dark Thoughts of the Grey Tombstone

There was more to Edward's concession, of course, than the goading of his friend or the unnerving presence of a marble bust—which, in itself, wasn't unnerving to him at all. It was more what the bust stood for—the fate that loomed before him. The fate he had unwittingly assumed one sweltering day in Georgia eight years past that had left him the eldest—no, _only_—heir to the Gracey fortune. That had commenced with a string of private tutors, intensive instruction in history and literature and foreign languages, fencing lessons, and how to conduct oneself as a gentleman. That would continue in the fall when he was shipped off on a northbound steam train to Milton, all the way through to some respectable university that would ensure him a respectable career. That in turn would, if his father had his way, place the name Gracey on everyone's lips from East Coast to West.

Which was a perfectly fine fate…for someone else's son.

In theory, Edward had no quarrel with his father's carefully mapped-out plan for his future. After all, he didn't aspire to become some carefree gadabout sponging off the family fortune—the subject of a sermon Father had been particularly fond of delivering to his sons on more than one occasion. Though Edward had gotten the point (and then some) when he'd brought out Hogarth's _A Rake's Progress_ to serve as a visual aid.

But while his father dreamed of him leading a state or even a nation, Edward's own dreams of his future were a little more romantic and a little less respectable. A lot less lucrative, to be sure. He imagined himself, as a newly minted graduate, traveling through Europe, seeing with his own eyes all those places that only existed in books and paintings—windswept moors, hallowed cathedrals, ancient temples adorned with the smashed remains of forgotten gods. All the while scribbling down what would eventually become his own published masterwork.

That wouldn't happen, of course. No son of George Gracey would grow up to become some daydreaming dilettante. Nor would they dare stand up to him and protest the tragic plight of the postbellum bourgeoisie to his face.

So Edward decided to rebel in a quieter fashion, by casting aside duty and decorum for the afternoon and following the stablehand's son to a dodgy-looking ring of circus tents set up a mile from the Mississippi.

It was a small if futile step, but it was something.

He wasn't entirely sure that Ezra had believed him when he'd insisted that Father had granted him permission to go, as a one-time reward for being ahead of his studies. The driver had fixed a suspicious eye on him for an agonizingly long moment, scratching the rapidly balding pate beneath his shabby bowler hat while Edward squirmed. Then, he'd merely shrugged and tugged on the reins, maybe not convinced, but at least absolved of any responsibility in Edward's rule-breaking.

It had been remarkably easy to slip out. Father had locked himself in his office hours ago with his shipping contracts, assuring that he wouldn't emerge until suppertime, and Ramsley had been busy conducting interviews for new household staff—a direct result, Edward thought with a regretful chuckle, of the mausoleum incident. At least his part in the affair had been limited to showing Asa and Phineas the secret passage; the rest had been all their doing. _He _never would have condoned showing the laundresses down there, let alone "accidentally" locking the door behind them. The cemetery behind Gracey Manor sparked no fear in his heart; he'd spent entirely too much time there, at the graves of his grandparents, or his mother, or Charles and Alice, to feel anything but a dull ache, a pang of emptiness as he passed amongst the headstones. But he could understand their panic, left alone with a pile of mouldering bones and their own runaway imaginations.

He recalled feeling it himself once upon a time, when his mother had been alive and that gypsy woman had come to call at the oddest hours. The séance room had been off-limits, but curious six-year-old boys often found a way when they had a mind to disobey, and he'd wandered in once when she'd been by herself. He could recall it in flashes—the pungent smell of garlic mingled with incense, the woman's wild graying hair undulating about her face, hands fluttering over a crystal orb while muttering strange words—the only one he'd understood had been "baron." There had been an eerily realistic wooden doll, maybe two feet tall, seated in a chair at her side, that at the time he was certain was looking directly at him.

Foolishness, he told himself, just as his father had told him on the morning of his mother's funeral, when the gypsy woman—Leota, he recalled—had been dragged forcibly from the house in front of a gaggle of horrified mourners, screaming all the while about a curse upon those who bore the Gracey name. Foolishness, his father had said, ordering Ramsley to never allow the woman within a mile of the Manor again, and to have the séance room sealed off permanently the following day.

He shivered, despite the humid Louisiana air. Why now did that inspire uneasy prickles at the back of his neck, when he'd pushed it from his mind all these years? Surely the afternoon's reading hadn't helped matters any. Briefly, an image flashed before his mind of Gracey Manor, darkened by overgrowth and decay, suddenly buckling under its own weight, collapsing into a landslide of wrought iron and marble…with him still inside…

"Edward. _Edward!_"

His head snapped up to attention. Asa was staring at him, as was Prudence, Ezra's moon-faced daughter, in that peculiar blank way of hers that gave the impression no one was home behind the milky gray eyes. It took a moment for him to register that the cart beneath them had ceased its hypnotic swaying, and another moment for his face to register the appropriate level of embarrassment.

"You kids plan on getting out anytime soon?" Ezra cast them a backwards glance. One of the horses, Widowmaker, stomped and whinned impatiently.

"C'mon, wake up," snorted Phineas, a stablehand who had three years and easily a hundred pounds on Edward, as he unceremoniously grabbed him by the lapel and tossed him out of the cart. Phineas had no bones about mishandling the young lord of the manor, figuring that Edward would be too afraid of further physical retribution if he told. Phineas was, for the most part, correct in this assessment.

"Where've you _been?_" whispered Asa, offering him a hand up. "Look, quit worrying about it. Let's go get the tickets." He gestured toward a red ticket wagon with the words _Elias Bros. Circus _arcing over the window in graceful gold letters. A sea of sagging striped tents rose out of the marshy earth behind it.

Edward nodded absently, brushing dead grass from his sleeve as he followed Asa, while Prudence lingered behind. He needed the distraction, for neither the sun nor the sweltering humidity outside could quell the chill that had so suddenly seized his bones.


	4. Ode to a Nightingale

"She Moved Through The Fair" and "The Unquiet Grave" are long part of the public domain, so no site admins can crash my party for using song lyrics. MOO HA HA.

* * *

"Lucky you," crooned the ticket seller in a boozy singsong drawl, baring a handful of rotten snaggle teeth as he counted his money. "O'Malleys are settin' up in the big tent right about now."

"Who?" Phineas demanded—rather stupidly, Edward thought, because one would have to be blind or simple to miss the giant poster tacked at eye level to the side of the ticket wagon. _The Flying O'Malleys—World-Famous Funambulists_, it read._ Formerly of County Cork, Lately of Coney Island. High-Wire Thrills and Chills Abound! _It was accompanied by a caricature of a prim brunette, nonchalantly twirling a parasol as she poised on a tightrope over the wide-open jaws of a crocodile.

"What are yeh, simple?" The man tapped the poster with the butt of his cigar and guffawed, breath reeking of moonshine. "Them's the O'Malleys. Consider yerselves lucky—yer some of the last folk to catch the tightrope act. After this tour they're switchin' to the trapeze—like that Leotard feller over in France. That's what the folk be wantin' to see. Least the name'll finally fit—they ain't exactly flyin' now, after all, are they?"

"Fascinating," Prudence said in her usual monotone, though her eyes were fixed on the path of a monarch butterfly through the air, which might have been the source of her comment.

Asa looked intrigued. "So they really walk over a croc pit? Hey, Edward, let's go see that fir—Edward?"

But Edward's attention had been drawn to another poster, a smaller one, tacked below the one trumpeting the O'Malleys. This one featured all sorts of strange drawings done in thin, spidery lines: a dripping-wax man that resembled a living candle; a sinister-looking plant, not unlike a Venus flytrap with teeth, with a human arm protruding from its "mouth"; an eyeless face that gazed serenely out at nothing from within a crystal ball. For some reason Edward couldn't stop staring at that last one.

Tall letters stretched across the head of the poster in spidery script to match the artwork. _Professor Claude Crump's Museum of the Weird._

Asa, peering around Edward's shoulder, attempted to sound out the first few words before giving up and studying the pictures instead. "Oh, the freak show," he said dismissively. "Thought you'd've had enough of that for one day by now. Let's go find some seats; I don't want to be standing in the back the whole time."

"R-right," Edward said at last, craning his neck one last time for a look as he let Asa drag him over to the largest of the tents. Surely it was just his imagination again, but there was an echo of familiarity, if ever faint, in the lightly inked Mona Lisa smirk of the face in the sphere.

* * *

"That's right, folks, there are _no _wires! This lithe young lady must rely solely on her toes—if you'll pardon the pun. Balance, grace, and poise in spades—not to mention nerves of steel—and she does it all without breaking a sweat. The last in this intrepid line of rope-walkers. Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Miss Lillian!"

The ringmaster's megaphoned proclamation was nearly drowned out by a harsh cacophony of cheers, whistles and applause. Edward joined in politely, noting that Lillian O'Malley did not look quite like her counterpart caricature on the poster—and it had to be her, as the remainder of the O'Malley clan consisted of two teenage boys and a middle-aged man. Beaming, auburn-haired and at least sixteen, she had performed a routine purportedly from _Giselle_ on the taut wire—a shade different from the demure brunette one misstep away from a grisly death.

Next to him, Asa was whining.

"This can't be it. They haven't brought out the crocs yet! I oughta go back and complain about the false advertisin' right now—"

"Hey, they're lightin' torches outside," Phineas informed them of a sudden, poking his head through the gap in the wooden bleachers where Edward and Asa were sitting. "Them roustabouts out there said that some fellow's going to juggle them blindfolded, then swallow the flames. You leave now, you're gonna miss it."

"Eh…" Asa shrugged, but quieted his grumbling at the tantalizing possibility of human combustion.

Edward's thoughts, meanwhile, had wandered back to the Museum of the Weird, and he began fidgeting in an un-gentlemanly fashion, wondering if he ought to try and slip away from the others without anyone noticing. It was probably the only chance he'd get, as none of the others seemed particularly interested, and Asa had all but tried to discourage him. And maybe Asa had been right to do so—but the curiosity was an unbearable itch at the back of his mind.

An opportunity finally opened up when Fercurius Fennel, the Human Furnace, dropped one of his torches in mid-juggle, causing nearly everyone, including Asa, to lean forward and gasp. Edward slid off the edge of the bleacher and sidled out of the tent as quickly as possible. Five minutes—maybe ten—and then he'd come back, and hopefully no one would be the wiser.

The stares of the circus folk cast his way as they milled about varied: there were appraising looks and nods from much older women in very inappropriate outfits; threatening sneers from men with equally scary-looking inked patterns on their backs and biceps. Edward did his best not to look at any of them as he sought out Professor Crump's tent.

It stood separately from the others, the much smaller pariah of the group draped in black and purple. Edward peered around the tent flap in time to see an aging man in an immaculate white suit, wild hair a frayed halo surrounding his face, toss a dark cloth over a tall cage. "I'm afraid that's all the raw meat Medea can handle for now," he announced, eyes gleaming with frenetic energy as the small crowd assembled on the benches before him applauded, "but do return at her regular feeding time tomorrow, if you'd like to see her take on a live chicken."

Well, Edward thought, he'd missed the meat-eating plant, but no matter. He wasn't certain his stomach was up to such a spectacle, anyway. And he was just in time for the next act. Fleetingly he wondered if the face in the crystal ball would put in an appearance.

"Speaking of birds," Professor Crump went on, clasping his hands together and flashing a broad smile, "we have a very special recent acquirement here at the Museum, all the way from the Orient. Perhaps some of you have heard the story behind it: the famous gold Nightingale, sent from the Emperor of Japan to the Emperor of China, who, when wound up, enthralled an entire kingdom with her song." Several assistants wheeled a much larger cage into view as he spoke.

Slowly, Edward deposited himself on the end of an empty bench in the very back of the tent. A memory drifted to the forefront of his mind, of himself, at a very young age, huddled on Charles's bed with him and Alice, all in their nightclothes; while their mother read aloud from the crimson wing chair. Something about a wind-up bird that broke when it had sung too much and an emperor lying at death's door.

Gads, did he only ever remember the morbid details?

"Well, she comes before you now, repaired and re-fitted with a more familiar repertoire of songs, for your entertainment." Crump whisked a gold brocade cloth off the cage with a dramatic flourish. "Behold, the Nightingale!"

Edward stared in something between horror and wonder. There, upon a velvet perch behind the iron bars, sat a young girl no older than he. Her head was nearly concealed by an elaborate headdress of gold feathers, and what was visible of her face had been coated with white pancake makeup. Paste jewels dotted her cheeks; glittering necklaces and bracelets wrapped round her throat and weighed down her wrists. The elaborate costume did nothing to mask the misery in her eyes.

"Excuse me a moment; I've forgotten to wind her." Crump pantomimed the act of winding a nonexistent key behind her back. Most of the audience laughed. Edward grimaced, wondering how on earth one could endure this humiliation on a daily basis. Was it even legal, to force a child into such a charade? Was she some orphan under Crump's care, or perhaps even his own daughter?

Somehow he doubted that. There was no paternal warmth in his wild eyes, or in the vaguely threatening way he stood over her. Nor was there any trace of elation in hers as she beheld the crowd, as there had been in Lillian O'Malley's. She stared blankly out at the audience, eyes fixed somewhere on the back of the tent.

Crump mimicked one final motion and stepped back. Mechanically, the girl's mouth fell open, and a clear, high, chilling voice rang out:

"_Cold blows the wind to my true love,  
And gently drops the rain.  
I only have but one true love,  
And in green wood he lies slain.  
I'll do as much for my true love,  
As any young girl may.  
I'll sit and mourn all on his grave,  
For twelve months and a day."_

She sang her way through the old traditional, the notes sweet and clear, but hollow and joyless underneath. The crowd appeared to take no notice, applauding at the end. Her voice was mesmerizing, but Edward could not look at her face for longer than a moment without feeling absolutely wretched. At the end of the first song, he told himself he should leave; yet by the third, he had forgotten all about it.

"_Last night she came to me, my dead love came in  
So softly she came that her feet made no din  
As she laid her hand on me and this she did say_  
'_It will not be long, love, 'til our wedding day.' "_

As Edward's eyes ventured back to her face, the girl's gaze inadvertently met his. Her eyes widened briefly; when he blinked, she had returned to staring at the tent wall. A smattering of applause sounded, and with a sudden rustle of gold cloth, the girl disappeared from view.

"The Nightingale will be on exhibit again tomorrow afternoon," Crump proclaimed, his wide smile disconcerting as the Nightingale's cage was wheeled back out of sight. "I invite you all to return then, once she's had her daily tune-up."

Light laughter floated after Edward as he ducked out of the tent, feeling vaguely sick. Oh, was there ever a stupid, foolhardy idea brewing in the back of his mind—but he'd already had several of those today, and doubted one more would make much difference. He was already due to catch it upon his return; he might as well go all the way.

He crept around the tent to where he presumed the "back" might be, and crouching nearly in the mud, lifted the edge and stuck his head into the darkened interior of the tent, craning his neck uncomfortably in order to look around.

The back of the tent was a mess. There were huge steamer trunks with peeling leather and missing rivets, plastered with paper labels declaring different exotic locales: _Paris, Naples, Cairo._ Wooden crates with CAUTION or FRAGILE stenciled in black paint on their planks. Cages—there were at least a dozen, the smallest barely big enough to hold a cricket, the largest of the lot containing—

He held his breath. The Nightingale sat with her back to him, legs dangling listlessly from the velvet perch, mane of gold feathers cascading down her back. From the movement of her arms and drooping of her neck, it looked like her attention was focused on something in her hands—as far as he could tell from his pitiful vantage point.

"Hello."

Who'd said that? He'd said that. _Idiot. _The Nightingale whirled around in alarm at the sudden intrusion, mouth forming a startled O as her eyes finally settled on his disembodied head peeking up from beneath the hem of the tent.

"Uh…please don't scream?" he added hesitantly, offering a halfhearted smile in an attempt to diffuse the situation.

The Nightingale's expression did not change. "What," she asked in a quavering stage whisper that reminded him powerfully of what a little girl she was, "are you doing back here?"

A fair question. One he wasn't sure how to answer. _I wanted to cause trouble? I lost something back here. I'm on the run from gypsies. I was drawn here by something—something I can't really explain—_

"I wanted to see you." He surprised himself with the simplicity of that proclamation. The girl looked equally as surprised beneath her layers of spackle makeup and paste jewels.

"You can't be here," she whispered, voice not quite regained, as she moved to face forward again and banish him with her back. "The Professor will be furious if he finds you."

"Why does he keep you like this?" Edward pressed, as he crawled all the way under the rim of the tent and ambled to his feet in the cramped space, finally appropriating the corner of a large trunk to sit upon. The Nightingale glanced back again, watching him in fearful exasperation. "Haven't you got parents?"

It was the wrong thing to say, he knew immediately, as her face fell faster than a ten-ton anchor at the words. But he didn't have time to utter an apology before she sidestepped the matter and hissed, "Don't _you? _Isn't someone looking for you?"

"They're all back at the tightrope tent. And my father doesn't know I'm here."

"Your mother?" she ventured.

Edward's mouth tightened—but he had invited the question, hadn't he? "My mother's dead," he answered curtly.

Remorse flickered through the wide greenish-flecked eyes, before the Nightingale ducked back under her fringe of feathers and whispered: "Mine, too."

For the second time, she allowed her eyes, twitching and uncertain as they crept up Edward's person, to meet his. And the longer Edward stared back, the more aware he was of a new…strange sensation within him. One that caused his heart to flutter—almost as rapidly as her eyelashes did—all the while the warmth was slowly seeping out of his bones. It left behind an ache, a sort of chill, but it wasn't altogether unpleasant. It wasn't enough to make him turn away. Indeed, he found he _couldn't_—his joints had all somehow locked in place.

"What's your name?" he heard himself ask.

The Nightingale blinked, and hesitated, parting her lips—then gasped instead at the sudden sound of a muffled din coming from the front of the tent, where the show was no doubt wrapping up. "He'll be coming," she breathed. "You have to go."

"Just tell me your name," Edward pushed, "and I'll go."

"You already know it." Her eyes cast one more piercing glance through his before she turned about again, a shadow in a gilded cage hunched beneath a pile of brocade and feathers.

A dull glint of gold drew his eye to the ground. A single feather, likely molted from that voluminous headdress, rested near the sole of his shoe. Furtively, he slipped it into his jacket pocket.

What was she talking about? He hadn't somehow missed her telling him…or was this some sort of riddle? Surely Crump hadn't legally had her name changed to "Night N. Gale", had he? Though he did seem more than a bit mad—

Footsteps. Clanking. He could hear Crump's voice, irritable now that he had dropped the guise of showman, nearing the back of the tent—or perhaps rising in volume. The Nightingale looked behind her again, and her parting glance, along with her voice, held a note of desperation that bordered on begging. "_Please_ go."

Abruptly, Edward fell to his knees and rolled beneath the tent. Once outside and on his feet, he broke into a run, feeling suddenly as if bad spirits—or more likely, Professor Crump—were dogging his heels. He tried making out the silhouette of the great tent over the smaller nearby ones as he ran, but his vision was swimming, along with all the contents of his head—which is probably what caused him to run headlong into the tiny crimson tent, causing it to sway perilously as he fell hard to the ground.

He caught a strong whiff of sandalwood incense, laced with an even stronger note of garlic, as he gingerly lifted his head. Gauze tickled his cheek—layers and layers of filmy veiling that swept the ground, that swathed a vaguely familiar, yet somehow terrifying presence.

He heard the haughty, sneering voice before he saw the face, though he recognized it at once.

"I've been expecting you, little Master Gracey."


End file.
